Independence Day!

Today Zack and I went out for a little stroll to get some air before it heats up too much in the Valley.  Also we wanted to give Jeff a nice long sleeping in time, since Zack has been having these weird intermissions around 3 a.m. and is up for 90 minutes or so.  Jeff tackled the one last night.  They are no fun!  The only plus is that Zack sleeps in when he is up partying at 3 in the morning.

The Valley Village Homeowners Association was setting up a big shindig in our local park.  When Zack gets excited, he makes this amazing sound:  a dramatic intake of breath, a gasp of happiness.  He makes it whenever he realizes we're going to the park and when Jeff drops him off at daycare.  So when he saw the swings today and this many balloons, it was just too much. Hugely dramatic gasp.

We had breakfast al fresco.  Waffles and dried fruit.  He is not so much a fruit eater, but I found these Gerber freeze dried fruits that he loves.

He looks great in my most recent Target sunglasses.

I was just reading that toddlers vacillate between independence and clinginess.  So all over the play structures in the park, I was blown away by how much Zack can do now.  He is such a climber.  Jeff started taking the boy on the monkey bars when Zack was teeny, so now he has almost no fear.  It's really great to see.  And then every now and then, when we would go down the slide, that was just a little much, and he would want to be carried for a while.

But when he saw some guys hanging balloons on the corners of the tents in the distance, he completely took off!  I glanced down, and the next thing I knew, he was speeding across the park.  What happened next was an epic journey for him.  The terrain was a little rough, and he stumbled a few times.  He also strayed and ambled away from the goal, but then he would find the object of the journey again and reorient himself.  The balloons were his North Star.  He made it all the way across the grass to the tents, which you can see in the distance over his head in this picture.  Then he stood there and admired the gigantic bouquet of balloons that the guys were working with.  And of course, they gave him one, even though it meant they had a red and a white on left over that they couldn't use on one of the corners.

Mission accomplished.

Zack also followed a little girl around the park with the same determination.  He loves older kids, but especially girls.

And then he saw a doggie and took off in that direction.  Unfortunately he ate it on a downslope and ended up with grass on his face, in his mouth, and a small cut on his nose and some light abrasions.  He was a complete champ about it.  Just a little crying, and then a sippy cup and some playing with his new balloon made it all better.

He didn't even cry when the balloon popped in his hands.  He was very zen about that loss.

And then he snapped this photo of Mommy's shoes.

And another of his own shadow.  I think the composition is pretty good in these.

Happy 4th!  Since Zack tends to cry if we even operate a blender in the house, we are not seeking out fireworks.  Anyway, he'll be in bed by then.  So we'll probably catch the local CBS Radford Studios show from our front lawn, if anything.

In other news, Zack has been recovering from a weird virus that left him covered in red polka dots.  We have now had to delay his MMR twice due to illnesses.  It's sort of ironic that the second delay actually involved a measles-like rash, but we took him to the doc (at Jeff's insistence) and he does not have measles or chicken pox.  Just some other, non specific red, dotty rash.

We also recently got an allergy panel done for him.  Jeff wondered if he might have allergies, since he's congested a lot.  I have no idea how the allergy test works, but it turns out Zack has no allergies to anything, which is great to know.  Because he's often stuffed up and/or rashy, it's nice to be sure those symptoms are definitely viral and we don't have to worry about nuts or dairy or pollen or cat dander.  We just have a daycare kid who gets every single bug that comes around.